Silicon badia

The term Silicon Badia was first coined by Namek T. Zu’bi, a Jordanian living in New York City and working within the early stage technology venture capital space, whom in March 2011 was preparing to bring together, in a unique event of its type, a number of Arab technology entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to meet in New York with a counterpart group of US venture capitalists and rising tech entrepreneurs from the city’s Silicon Alley - a nickname for an area in Manhattan, New York City with a concentration of Internet and new media companies. The event, later entitled Silicon Badia meets Silicon Alley was held in June 2011, and was sponsored by Accelerator Technology Holdings (ATH), MENA’s first tech VC fund based in Jordan and led by Fawaz H. Zu’bi, Chadbourne & Parke, a New York leading global law firm, and the Middle East Technology Pioneers Exchange (METPE), a network group formed by Emile Cubeisy, Omar Sati and Namek T. Zu’bi to create a technology capacity and best practice exchange forum between entrepreneurs in the Arab world and the United States. The exchange was very successful and exposed each group to what the other was doing in its respective region/city. The “Silicon Badia” term was seen to immediately identify itself as an extension to the highly successful silicon regions of the world where tech companies flourished to become global hubs of innovation and creativity. In this context, the reference of “Badia” attached to the term “Silicon” would immediately identify itself, in the mind of an Arab, with technology companies within the Middle East region who are today playing an important and transformative role of developing a tech industry that aims to become the next Silicon Valley in the Arab world.
“Badia” is the Arabic word used to refer to areas within the Arabian desert in the Middle East, covering nearly 85-89% of the landmass of the region, where the land is not completely barren, but rather with low mountains and vast rocky plains, where Bedouins chase sparse areas of greenery to graze their sheep, and villages huddle around oases with precious water. While it appears inhospitable and barren at first glance, it has proven to be a valuable source for natural resources, including oil, natural gas, phosphates, and sulfur and has served throughout history as an important commercial passageway. An example of the “Badia” is the region bordering the Mafraq Governorate in Jordan.
In the year 2000, King Abdullah II of Jordan declared that as a first priority to create jobs for his people, he would introduce technology to education and embark on creating an industry within the country that would raise skill levels and give his young citizens a comparative advantage for more jobs and security in the future. Within ten years, and with a driven government willing to support his initiative that was led then by Minister of ICT, Fawaz H. Zu’bi, Jordan, a country with predominantly human resources to drive economic growth, became the leading developer of a growing technology industry that although still in its infancy stages in 2011, was able to achieve almost US$1Billion in revenue in 2010 and employ no less than 80,000 people. The budding industry today comprises of a growing number of innovative start-ups as well as early stage tech companies in a number of different fields of information technology including software development, technology service platforms, animation, internet ventures, media and content development, security, financial, e-commerce, and mobile applications and other areas, mostly geared to address the 300+ million Arabic speaking population around the globe. Other countries in the region showing promise of developing a viable and thriving technology entrepreneurial movement include Egypt and Lebanon.
<references />
http://www.zawya.com/story.cfm/sidZAWYA20110621112435/Jordanian_Tech_Entrepreneurs_Visit_NY_Seeking_Partnerships_with_Fast_Emerging_NY_Tech_and_VC_Industry Silicon Badia Meets Silicon Alley
http://www.ameinfo.com/269342.html
http://www.zawya.com/story.cfm/sidZAWYA20110628065033/Arab_Tech_Entrepreneurs_Complete_Three_Day_Capacity_Exchange
http://www.jlns.com/legal-wire/2011/06/27/chadbourne-parke-and-arab-tech-entrepeneurs-complete-%E2%80%98capacity-ex
http://openviewpartners.com/news/venture-partner-firas-raouf-speaks-at-nyc-startup-event/
http://www.chadbourne.com/newsevents/NewsDetail.aspx?news=1729
http://www.businessinsider.com/feeding-a-revolution-through-entrepreneurial-startups-2011-6

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu